Marcel Barbeau winner of the Canada Governor’s General Award 2013 in Visual and Media Arts
Conseil des arts du Canada / Martin Lipman
March 12, 2013
Last Monday, March 12, the Canada Council for the Arts organized a press conference at the Cinémathèque québécoise in Montréal to announce the list of the winners of the Governor General’s Award in Visual Arts and Media Arts for the year 2013, at which the winners were present. Among them, at the very forefront, Marcel Barbeau, to whom the Council’s vice-chair, Mister Simon Brault, gave the amount of $25 000 that comes along with the Canadian top award in visual arts. Marcel Barbeau was submitted as a nominate by the art writer Ray Ellenwood from Toronto, supported by Jeffrey Spalding, artistic director at the Museum of Contemporary Art Calgary. On March 20, 2013, a reception to honour the winners will take place at Rideau Hall, where Barbeau will officially receive this award and the commemorative medal materializing his achievement from the hands of the Governor General himself.
For the spirit and attitude he displayed in his researches and the way he has been constantly inventing new forms, for the transdisciplinary and the historical dimensions of his work, whether on the national or the international levels, Barbeau recently received the greatest honours in recognition to his work, topped this year with this Governor General’s Award. With this award, jury members from all over Canada were gathered together by the Canada Council for the Arts recognize the value and the coherence of his work, as well as his career, which has been of great significance. Canada thus rewards him with the highest award in the field of visual arts. In 1973, Marcel Barbeau had already received the Lynch-Staunton grant from the Council for the Arts, given to artists in their mid-career. He was nominated Officer of the Order of Canada in 1995.
During this press conference, Marcel Barbeau was pleased to see that the message promoting liberty and open-mindedness towards the world and towards the future, a message he always tried to communicate to others with his work all along his singular path, had been heard by artists belonging to younger generations and originating from various regions of the country, represented by the jury. As he deplores the disparity between the amount of money that accompanies this award and the salaries earned by hockey players, he was very happy about receiving this proof of recognition and this honour and expressed his gratefulness for everyone’s contribution. Besides, he wished for the Canadian government to improve the revenues granted to aged artists by instituting an artist’s resale right on the first resale of their works, thus recognizing their contribution to their increase in value and to Canadian culture, as numerous developed countries already do.
For more information about this event:
http://journalmetro.com/culture/273467/marcel-barbeau-prime-par-le-gouverneur-general/